Public Papers and Letters of Oliver Max Gardner: Governor of North Carolina, 1929-1933

may have had immediately more important bearing on
the public welfare than yours. Your problem is to
deal with fundamental principles. The thinking and
the work you do in rewriting the Constitution may not
immediately show on the surface. Whether you do
your job thoroughly and with wisdom will not be apparent to a great many people in North Carolina. Most
of us will not know whether you have found the correct
answer to this, that, or the other question involved in
the organic law of the State. This fact, however,
merely places on you the higher obligation to do your
task in such a way as to serve best the public welfare.

I have every confidence that each one of you will
undertake his share of the assignment to redraft and
rewrite the Constitution as an obligation of the highest
order and as an opportunity to render the fullest service that your training and experience and high citizenship fits you to render. The membership of this commission was not lightly considered. No one of you is
here because of personal or political friendship. Each
was appointed because of my high regard for qualities
which I felt would be constructively and patriotically
employed in this epoch-making undertaking.

North Carolina is the only Southern state which has
not substantially rewritten the Constitution adopted
by it or forced upon it in the Reconstruction era following the War Between the States. Throughout my
public life I have observed the limitations placed upon
the General Assembly and upon our organized government in serving intimately the present needs of the
people because of the restrictions of our Constitution.
Our Constitution, written sixty-three years ago when North Carolina was a broken, impoverished, agricultural state, does not, of course, adequately serve the
economic, industrial, social, and governmental life
which we have been developing since 1900. As you
know, practically all efforts in recent years to recon-

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